As you can see, I've been working on the look of the blog. I'm not sure how my "aesthetic" sensibilities go over with the general populace, so if the color scheme assaults your eyes, just tell me and I'll try to accrue some taste.
As far as projects go, I'll soon be working with Kevin Chen of geakStudios on expanding "Stealth Robot Programmer." Namely, we want to make a level editor for it. So, that should be cool.
For a while, I was really eager to keep blasting through projects really quickly, but in the grand scheme of things I haven't been working on Ahab's Revenge for very long, and it wouldn't hurt to flesh it out a bit. What I really want to do is demonstrate level variety -- several people have pointed out that the constant upward climb can get a little monotonous. And with full 360-degree firing range and the mobility of a side-scrolling platformer, why not take advantage of the flexibility?
At the moment, there are two primary level concepts that I want to try out. The first, and most obvious one, is to take this in the direction of a platformer. Ahab jumps around dodging and shooting enemies while moving horizontally toward the end goal, with the destructible blocks thrown in as obstacles along the way. It's pretty simple, but with enough interesting elements added in, it could be fun.
The second concept would lead Ahab's Revenge in a more purist puzzle-game direction. In the "painter" levels, Ahab is in a single room with a solid block of corals in the center, and a fixed number of whales strewn about the stage. The corals are not moving, and the aim of the level in this case is not to destroy all the corals, but to destroy the right corals to make them form a specific pattern. As if you're chiseling out a sculpture. The tricky part is that the colors of the coral are not initially set so that it is possible to achieve your goal; instead you must use a fixed arsenal of "paintbrush harpoons." These are fired from your back like regular harpoons, but are giant paintbrushes that will change one or more of the corals to whatever color it is equipped with. Once you have the colors set up, right, you can switch back to normal harpoons and start clearing the correct corals by hitting them with whales.
If developing Ahab's Revenge has taught me one thing, it's that nobody has any idea what I'm talking about. So here's an example of what such a level might look like:
And you would be given an objective at the beginning of the level to use the right combination of paintbrushes and whales to carve the chunk of corals into, say, an "H" shape.
Anyway, give feedback! Tell me if this is an interesting path to follow, or offer your own ideas.
nathan
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